Johnny fished through his saddle bags and pulled out a can of beans. He said, “Joe and I were busy talking today and we didn’t shoot us any supper. ‘Fraid it’s just beans tonight.”
Matt watched Joe dig out a long wooden spindle of some sort and sit by the fire. Joe then pulled from the fire a twig that had a tiny flame dancing on the end, and brought the fire to a small cup-shaped section toward the end of the spindle.
Joe said, “Not to complain about them beans, but I have to admit, I cain’t wait to taste Ma’s cookin’ again.”
Matt was watching Joe curiously. He said, “Just what is that thing you’re holding?”
Joe held it up. “A pipe. A Cheyenne pipe.”
“Cheyenne?”
He nodded. “An Indian tribe I trucked with for a while. A long while, actually.”
“You trucked with them?”
Joe nodded. “Lived with ‘em for a time.”
Matt gave his brother a long look. “You lived with Indians?”
Joe nodded again. “Hunted with ‘em. Fought with ‘em. Almost married one of ‘em.”
“But aren’t they..,” Matt was trying to be polite, but he was a little horrified and was having a hard time keeping it from showing. “But aren’t they savages? I mean, do they even cook their food?”
Joe chuckled and looked over at Johnny.
Johnny said, “In a lot of ways, they live a cleaner, truer lifestyle than we do. I’ve met some Indians. Comanche and Kiowa, mostly. Fought some of ‘em. But I’ve known many white men who strike me as being just as savage, or even more so.”
Joe took a draft of smoke and let it drift from his mouth. “Highly religious folks. Clean, too. Washed in a river or lake every single morning. Not many white folks can claim that.”
Matt gave Joe another long look. Johnny thought maybe Matt wasn’t sure if Joe was joking. Johnny chuckled and went back to heating beans in the skillet.
Matt said, “Everything I’ve ever heard about Indians...”
Johnny shook his head. “Hearsay is not the same thing as learning. Didn’t Pa used to say that?”
Joe said, “Believe he did.”
“I can’t speak for the Cheyenne, but I found the Comanche and the Kiowa much different than anything I had ever heard about them.”
Matt said, “Cheyenne? Kiowa? Aren’t they all the same people?”
Joe shook his head. “No, sir. Every bit as different as them people in Europe.”
Johnny said, “The Germans, the French, the Swiss. They all live on a tract of land not much bigger than Nebraska Territory. And yet look how different those cultures are.”
“But,” Matt said. “It’s not the same.”
“I’ve found people are about the same, anywhere. They might dress different and have different languages, but they all laugh when they find something funny. Cry when they’re sad. They love their children about the same way. They all need food and shelter.”
“But,” Matt said, “it couldn’t have been the same, living with them. You were an outsider. Their ways are different. Primitive.”
Joe shook his head. “I weren’t an outsider. I joined their tribe.”
Matt was left staring, speechless.
But Johnny said, as he stirred the beans, “That so?”
Joe nodded.
Johnny said, “An old scout I knew lived with the Apache one time and joined them. Told me a lot about it. A lot of folks call him Apache Jim.”
Joe nodded again. “Apache Jim Layton. Heard the name a time or two. At least once his name was tied together with yours. Is it true what they said, ‘bout you and Apache Jim riding into Mexico after border raiders to rescue a woman that got herself captured?”
Johnny nodded. “Yeah. About six months ago.”
“They say you shot ten Mexican raiders with eight shots.”
Johnny shook his head. “Got five, with four shots. They were on horseback, and when one fell he knocked the one beside him off his horse, too. I was using that Colt rifle in my saddle.”
“They also say you got ten Comanches once with ten shots.”
Johnny shook his head again, as he stirred the beans. “Five with five shots. That was nothing, really. I was standing on the ground and they were riding down on me. I was still with the Rangers, then. A fellow Ranger was wounded and on the ground behind me. I just drew and shot. No harder than shooting cans off a rail fence. Folks make more out of it than they need to.”
Joe grinned. “Folks are talking about you all the way to Laramie.”
Matt was listening, but saying nothing. Johnny thought his big brother was finding himself feeling lost.
Johnny said, “A lot has happened, Matt. We’re not the same boys who grew up on the farm beside you, all those years ago.”
Matt nodded. He then sat on the ground beside Joe and draped his arms across his knees and looked into the fire. Johnny thought Matt looked a little distant.
Johnny noticed a difference in his two brothers. Matt, who sat on the ground like it was something new to him. And Joe, who sat cross-legged on the ground making it look like the most natural thing in the world.
After a while, Matt said, “I’m not the same boy, either.”
And he let it go at that. Matt had always been the one to talk, to express his thoughts. But now he was strangely silent. Johnny decided to leave him alone, following the way of men of the West.
The three sat in silence while the fire crackled away, until Johnny said, “Beans’re done.”
Joe said, “Dish’m out.”
Matt took a couple of blankets from his duffel bag and spread them out on the grass.
He said, “I don’t know how well my back’s going to take to sleeping out on the open ground.”
Johnny had already stretched out. He had pulled a jacket from his saddle bags and rolled it up and was using it as a pillow. His gunbelt was beside him.
He said, “I prefer to sleep on the ground, under God’s open sky. I’ve come to feel the most at home sleeping this way. I haven’t slept on a mattress since I don’t know when.”
Joe was tucking his pipe back into his saddle bags. He said, “The closest I’ve come to sleeping under a roof in years is in a Cheyenne lodge.”
Matt said, “So, tell us what it was like to sleep in a lodge that belonged to an Indian.”
Joe was silent a moment. Joe’s voice was deeper than it had been when Johnny last saw him and he had a wild juniper bush of a beard, and he had picked up a bit of an accent. He said cain’t instead of can’t. But one thing that hadn’t changed was he had been a boy of few words, and now he was a man of few words.
Johnny had learned there was often deep meaning in Joe’s silence. You learned to read that silence, and Johnny was catching sadness in it now.
Then Joe said, “The lodge was mine.”
Matt propped himself up on one elbow. “The Indian lodge was yours?”
Johnny had a feeling Matt was going to pursue it further, and that Joe didn’t want it pursued, so he said, “Let’s get some sleep. I’d like to make it to the farm by tomorrow.”
Matt settled into his blankets. Joe climbed into his own.
Then a stick broke somewhere in the darkness beyond the fire. Johnny sat up and a pistol was in his hand.
Matt was looking at Johnny like he had lost his mind.
“It’s probably nothing,” Matt said.
Johnny held up his hand for silence.
Joe hadn’t drawn any weapons, but he was sitting up in his blankets and listening.
Johnny looked over at where the horses were picketed nearby. Joe’s horse was looking over toward the woods, but then it apparently decided there was nothing to worry about and went back to dozing. Bravo hadn’t looked up at all.
Johnny looked at Joe and nodded. Joe settled back into his blankets and Johnny did the same.
“What’s going on?” Matt said. “There was nothing out there. Maybe a small animal, but that’s all.”
Johnny
said, “Once you’ve been shot at a few times, I guess you just get a little jumpy.”
Now Johnny had Matt’s full attention. “You’ve been shot at?”
Johnny didn’t really want to talk about it, but said, “We’ve talked about some of the men I’ve shot. But sometimes they tend to shoot back. We chased lots of men, when I was with the Texas Rangers. Mexican border raiders. Outlaws. Occasional renegade Indians.”
Joe said, “Guess they haven’t heard of the legend, out to sea.”
Matt was now intrigued. “Legend? What legend?”
Johnny said to Joe, “Will you stop?”
Joe chuckled, but said nothing more.
Matt said, “I have a gun, too, you know. A Colt thirty-six. It’s in my duffel bag.”
Joe said, “Won’t do you no good there.”
“Well, I don’t expect to need it here. We’re not on the high seas, and we’re not in your Wild West.”
Joe said, “I ain’t packin’ mine away.
Johnny slid his gun back into its holster, but he kept it within reach. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”
11
The following morning, Matt rode with Joe, and Johnny had the duffel bag tied to the back of his saddle. It rode atop his bedroll.
Fences lined the trail, and at either side corn fields stretched away into the distance. Occasionally the boys saw a farmhouse, along with a barn and a small grouping of silos.
The afternoon passed and the sun fell below some sharp ridges to the west.
Matt said, “Want to make camp?”
Johnny shook his head. “We’re too close to the farm.”
Joe looked over at Johnny and said, “Let’s keep on ridin’.”
“I don’t know about you boys,” Matt said, “but I’ve been out to sea for three years and not used to sitting on a horse. My backside is about done for.”
Johnny said, “You’ll have time to recover, once we’re at the farm.”
Joe grinned, and they continued on.
The sun was soon gone, and the sky overhead was darkening when they topped the crest of a hill, and they could see a lighted window below.
Johnny reined up and looked down at the house. Joe reined up beside him. It wasn’t fully dark yet and they could see the house and the yard.
“There it is, boys,” Matt said, from over Joe’s shoulder. “First time we’ve seen home in three years.”
The house looked like it always had. Two floors, a peaked roof. A chimney made of brick. White clapboards. An old oak tree stood tall twenty feet from the kitchen doorway. A wooden swing had been suspended from the tree by ropes when Johnny was a child. He and Matt and Joe had climbed the tree more times than they could ever count.
The house and the yard didn’t seem to have changed, and yet, Johnny had been gone so long that the daily sense of familiarity you have when you live in an area was gone. In a way, Johnny felt like he was looking at it for the first time.
“What do you think we’ll find?” Johnny said.
Matt shrugged. “Ma and Pa, I suppose. A little older than we remember them. But otherwise, not changed much, I suspect. Life here in farming country doesn’t change much. One day to another, one year to another, is pretty much the same.”
They were silent a moment.
Then Joe said, “Maybe they haven’t changed, but we have.”
Johnny nodded. “I wonder if we’ll seem like strangers.”
“Only one way to find out.”
Matt nodded. “Indeed.”
And still they hesitated.
Matt said, “It has been said you can never really go home again, once you’ve been away for a while. You’ve changed, but the people have also changed. It’ll never entirely be the way you remember it, and you’ll not be the way they remember you.”
Joe pulled off his hat and shook out his long hair. It had become matted down under his hat. “The thought of everyone lookin’ at me like I’m a stranger won’t feel very good.”
Matt shook his head. “No, indeed.”
Johnny thought of Becky Drummond. The girl he had left behind. The first girl he had ever kissed.
He had kissed many in the years since, in the back rooms of saloons throughout southern Texas and in Mexico. In fact, he had done more than just kissing. But it had all been in the throes of tequila-induced passion. When he had kissed Becky, there had been an element of sweetness to it. A feeling of adventure. A feeling of stepping into territory he had never before been. Like he was some sort of pioneer.
She had been fifteen. When he saw her in his mind, he saw her with freckled cheeks and a long brown braid. She had green eyes that would come alive with mischief, like when she suggested they sneak off behind the barn at a community picnic, which was where the first kiss happened.
But she was no longer fifteen. A girl can change a lot in three years. She was probably not so much a girl now, but a woman. Would she be the same? Would she still look at him like she did then? Or was she married by now? For all Johnny knew, she could be a mother. In his letters home, he had never asked about her and Ma had never commented.
He thought about the changes in himself. He had been a farm boy when he left. Now he had fought border raiders, outlaws and Comanches. He was a gunfighter they were talking about in saloons throughout south Texas, and according to Joe, all the way to Nebraska Territory. He wondered if there was any of that farm boy left in him. He wondered what Ma would think of that. If she would be ashamed of what he had become. He was starting to wonder if he really wanted to find out.
Maybe coming home was a bad idea, he thought. But it was too late, now.
A dog began barking from somewhere outside the farmhouse.
“Well,” Johnny said, “they know someone’s here now.”
Matt nodded. “They’ll be expecting us. Or me, at least. I wrote to tell them I’d be coming.”
“I suppose we might as well ride on down,” Joe said.
Johnny gave a reluctant nod of his head and nudged his horse forward, and Joe fell into place behind him.
12
The dog came running out of the darkness, up the trail to meet the riders. Some sort of lab mongrel. Johnny remembered the dog well.
Johnny reined up and swung out of the saddle.
“Ol’ Jeb,” he said, and the dog’s barks of warning became yips of delight. The dog was wagging his tail so hard his entire back end was swinging back and forth.
Johnny knelt and the dog ran toward him. The dog flicked a lick at Johnny’s face, then Johnny began rubbing the dog’s head and neck. The dog’s tail was fanning away.
Johnny said, “I see you’re still around, you old coon dog.”
Old Jeb was a little heavier than Johnny remembered, the skin around the neck and chest a little looser. Three years can be a long time in the life of a dog. The same for a person too, he supposed.
“Come on, Jeb,” Johnny said, swinging back into the saddle. “Let’s go see the folks.”
The dog, yipping and prancing, led them the remainder of the way down the hill to the farmhouse.
Matt dropped down from Joe’s horse, and stood with his feet apart and his knees stiff. He said “I don’t think I’ll be able to walk for a week. I hurt in places I didn’t know I even had.”
The old farmhouse had a front porch that overlooked the yard, and Johnny and Joe tethered their horses to the railing. Johnny climbed the steps to the porch and took off his hat, and he raised his right fist to knock on the door.
Before his knuckles could make contact, the door opened and a man stood in the glow of a kerosene lamp. His hair was now completely white and the flesh under the jaw looser than Johnny remembered, and trailing from the eyes were more lines than what had been there three years ago. But he was the same man Johnny remembered.
“Pa,” Johnny said, extending his hand.
Thomas McCabe ignored his son’s hand and pulled him in for a hug.
A woman spoke from behind Pa. “John?”
Johnny looked past Pa to see Ma, her auburn hair now streaked with white and her face rounder than it had once been.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she looked at her son, and Johnny went to give her a hug.
Matt and Joe were with Pa, joining in one big three-way hug. Then they went to Ma. She threw her arms around Matt’s neck and then turned her attention to Joe. She gave him a hug, and then stepped back and reached a hand up to his bearded face.
“Don’t they have razors in the West?” was the first thing she said, and the boys and their Pa broke out laughing.
A voice came from the doorway to the parlor. “Johnny! Matt! Joe!”
The voice was deep, the voice of a man, and Johnny didn’t recognize it. He looked to see a young man standing there, almost as tall as he was and with a crop of wild red hair and a freckled nose and long arms and big hands.
Johnny said, “Luke?”
The boy smiled, and extended his hand to his brother. Johnny grasped the hand, pleased with the strength of his little brother’s grip, then pulled him in for a hug.
“You were just a little kid when I left,” Johnny said.
Luke nodded. “Now I’m almost a man.”
Johnny looked his brother in the eye. “No almost about it.”
Johnny removed his gunbelt, and slung it over one corner of the twin bed. The same bed he had slept in as a boy.
Ma had stared at his guns and he knew she didn’t like the sight of them, but she had said nothing about them. Joe’s pistol was tucked into the front of his belt, and if she had looked at it with concern, Johnny didn’t see it. But she looked at his guns with a little furrow between her brows, which meant she was worried but trying not to comment. Maybe it wasn’t so much that Johnny was wearing guns, but that he wore them like they were a part of him.
Maybe Ma was right to look at these guns the way she did, he thought. They were in a way kind of symbolic of the changes in him. Changes he was sure she wouldn’t like. Changes he wasn’t sure he liked.
He peeled off his shirt and stepped out of his pants. Wearing only his long handled union suit, he climbed beneath the covers of his bed.
Johnny McCabe (The McCabes Book 6) Page 4
